"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

This Day in WWII History: Dec 3, 1944: Civil war breaks out in Athens

On this
day, a civil war
breaks out in Athens as communist guerillas battle democratic forces for
control of a liberated Greece. Germany had occupied Greece to bail out Italy
after Italy's failed invasion threatened to leave Greece open to Allied
occupation. When Germany arrived, various Greek resistance forces gave battle,
but two stood out as particularly important: a communist-backed resistance
movement called the National Liberation Front, and a liberal, democratic
movement called the Greek Democratic National Army. While both of these
factions operated from different ideological frameworks, they nevertheless
occasionally cooperated in fighting the common German enemy. By early 1944
though, the communist-backed National Liberation Front had taken to the hills
to create a provisional government, rejecting the legitimacy of both the Greek
king and his government-in-exile. It also disregarded the one remaining rival
for ultimate political supremacy in Greece—the Democratic National Army.

When
Germany was forced to withdraw from Greece in October 1944, victorious British
forces brought together the communist and democratic factions in order to
establish a coalition government. But this government collapsed after the
communist Liberation Front refused to disband its guerrilla forces. So, on
December 3 war broke out between the communists and the democrats—with the
National Liberation Front taking control of most of Greece, with the exception
of the capital and Salonika.

The British fought against the
communists with the Democratic National Army, which began to move more and more
to the right politically as it struggled for survival and support. By February
1945, the National Liberation Front was forced to surrender and disband its
guerrilla army. One month later, a general election was held, and the democrats,
now also royalists, won control of the government. The communists refrained
from voting altogether, preferring to bide their time. When a plebiscite
elected the Greek king back to his throne in September of the same year, the
communists emerged from underground-and civil war broke out again. By this
time, Britain, fed up and exhausted, left the negotiation for peace to the United States, which
employed the Truman Doctrine of giving massive amounts of foreign aid to
governments pledged to democracy in order to keep them out of the
communist/Soviet orbit. It took time, but eventually the rejuvenated—and
well-funded—Greek democrats were victorious.